Internet reports tell of a Chinese man whose girlfriend needed treatments for cancer that the couple could not afford. Desperate, the man stole money to pay for the treatment. He was caught and jailed for 4 years—but was allowed to leave jail to attend a wedding ceremony with his new wife, who now was terminally ill (stubear, 2010, November 18).

Was it wrong for the man to steal money to save the woman’s life? Why or why not?

We ask this question not to determine the right answer but to note that there is no “right answer”—at least not in the same sense that there is a right answer to “What is 2 + 2?” or “Does the amount of water change when you pour it from a wide container into a narrow one?” The question about stealing money is not a factual question, but a moral question. The moral domain is a domain of reasoning that concerns personal rights, responsibilities, and obligations, especially with regard to the welfare of others. We’ll conclude this chapter by examining moral development, that is, the development of thinking about the moral domain.

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Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg established key foundations for the study of moral development. Inspired by Piaget, Kohlberg suggested that moral development occurs in stages. A moral stage is a period of development during which a person’s moral reasoning is consistently organized around a single way of thinking (Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977).

To identify moral stages, Kohlberg interviewed boys living in the Chicago area at 4-year intervals from childhood through young adulthood (Garz, 2009). He asked them questions such as the one above about stealing, and charted shifts in their moral thinking across time. Analysis of their responses led Kohlberg to propose three levels of moral thinking, each with two stages:

According to Kohlberg, social experiences affect people’s rate of progress through these stages and whether they ever reach the highest stage. Kohlberg called for moral education to increase the complexity of students’ moral reasoning (Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977).

Kohlberg’s work, although enormously influential, has been criticized, however. One criticism involves domains of reasoning. Kohlberg (like Piaget) assumed children would reason in a similar manner across different domains. But, evidence reveals domain specificity. For example, when thinking about the personal domain (i.e., actions that involve only oneself, such as hair style or food preferences), children employ principles involving personal choices and rights to privacy that are distinct to that domain (Nucci & Turiel, 2009).

A second criticism, which we will consider in detail after This Just In, involves gender.

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THIS JUST IN

You may have noticed something unusual about Kohlberg’s research, reviewed earlier: All the participants were male. The psychologist and feminist scholar Carol Gilligan (1977) noticed this and something more: None of the questions Kohlberg posed to participants dealt specifically with concerns unique to women’s lives. Furthermore, the style of moral thinking Kohlberg deemed most advanced—reasoning according to universal principles—may be preferred by men more than women. Kohlberg’s work, Gilligan concluded, was gender-biased; its procedures favored one gender (male) over the other.

Gilligan (1977) suggested that women’s moral reasoning differs from men’s. Women, she proposed, focus on personal relationships rather than abstract principles. They value obligations to others and try to solve problems without hurting others physically or psychologically.

In research, Gilligan posed moral questions pertinent to women’s lives (e.g., questions about pregnancy and a prospective abortion). She found that women progress through moral stages distinct from the ones identified by Kohlberg in research with men. The highest stage for women, Gilligan found, involved reasoning according to a principle of nonviolence; rather than adhering to abstract principles of justice, women adhered to the concrete human principle of not harming others (Gilligan, 1977).

Gilligan’s critique of Kohlberg’s research was powerful. But research conducted after she formulated her approach indicates that gender differences in moral reasoning are smaller than she expected. A meta-analysis of research on moral reasoning revealed that women do pay more attention to the care of others and men attend more to universal principles of justice. Yet the gender differences were small—so small that the findings did not support Gilligan’s claim that women’s and men’s moral thinking differs fundamentally (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000).

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This result, in which men and women were more similar than many anticipated, is not unusual. In many aspects of cognitive and social development, gender differences are smaller than people expect (Hyde, 2005). The relative lack of differences is important. Scientific findings do not support social stereotypes about stark differences between men’s and women’s tendencies and potentials. Instead, they are consistent with the idea that society should give all people, of both genders, equal opportunities for personal and professional success.